Mazaccio & Drowilal
Mazaccio & Drowilal
Elise Mazac aka Mazaccio (1988) and Robert Drowilal (1986) are two French artists working under the name Mazaccio & Drowilal.
Influenced by conceptual art, Pop painting and the Pictures Generation, their para-photographic work is based on the principle of ‘collimage’.
Their work tackles a range of subjects including celebrity, branding and identity.
In 2013, the duo won the 3rd BMW residency at the Musée Nicéphore Niépce. In 2017, they were residents at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York.
Their work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Les Rencontres d'Arles (2014), the French Institute, New York (2015), Les Abattoirs, Toulouse (2018), the Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Chaux-de- Fonds (2021), and group exhibitions at Galleria Continua, Les Moulins, the Musée Nicéphore Niépce and the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Paris.
They have also published a number of artist's books, including Wild Style (Camera, 2014), Champagne (RVB Books, 2015), The Happiness Project (RVB Books, 2018), Paparazzi (RVB Books, 2021), and Iconology (RVB Books, 2024).
They are visiting lecturers at the Ecole cantonale d'art de Lausanne (ECAL) in Switzerland.
With their research project entitled ‘Paravent Pictures’, Mazaccio & Drowilal are among the winners of the 6th edition of the Institut pour la photographie's research and creation support programme, devoted to the historical, theoretical or creative study of video walls.
As artists, Mazaccio & Drowilal are interested in what forms the backdrop to our lives: the images produced by consumer society, their abundance and the ways in which they are disseminated.
What narratives do they convey? How do they shape our visions of the world and our identities? To explore the notion of the wall of images, they are using the screen as an object of experimentation. Drawing on a range of disciplines, from art history and visual studies to anthropology, psychoanalysis and communication theories, they look at the making of icons and role-models, as well as the concepts of persona and extimacy that are intrinsically linked to them.